


We Carry on V - Gathered in

by SSJandTechno



Series: We Carry On [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Animal Death, Cassandra de Rolo Needs a Hug, F/M, Mild Gore, Mildly Dubious Consent, Percy is a pile of issues in a nice coat, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vampirism mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-21 09:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SSJandTechno/pseuds/SSJandTechno
Summary: Harvest is hard work when almost all of your administrators were systematically slaughtered, but given Whitestone's chronic food insecurity, the de Rolos cannot fail. Vex and her hunters represent another source of food, and so do the Hanserrens and their son, Cass's beau.Please, please read the rest of this set first. You will have no darn idea what's going on if you start here.If somebody asks, I'll put a TLDR as a prologue.You have been warned.
Relationships: Cassandra de Rolo & Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia
Series: We Carry On [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020607
Comments: 13
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

“Twelve, Twenty-four, Thirty-six, Forty-eight. Forty-seven and a half, really. That’s not a full barrel.” Percy said. “I’m giving you three full dozen for that, do you want to revise your last dozen or take?”  
“Take, m’lord.” The sweaty farmhand replied.   
Percy frowned. “More tax will be due on it, you do know that, don’t you? We round the dozens up.”  
“This point in the day, m’lord, I’m not gonna to cart one barrel back over. I want off.”  
“I suppose that’s understandable. Tax is five, then, but we’ll include the short barrel in the spirit of fairness.”

The farmhand and Jack started pulling barrels off the cart, Percy started burning ‘saleable’ marks in to the other forty-three. There was a system to this. Vex’s innovations were making things easier, but main harvest was still bloody hard work. Every road in to town was lined with tables. At each table was a head and a hand. The ‘heads’ were people who worked for the castle or one of the temples and could read, write, and number fluently and unerringly. Himself, Vex, Cass, Archibald, Yennen, and anyone else they could muster. The hands were just trustworthy bodies to help with the heavy lifting that this involved. In principle, the rules were simple enough. Percy hadn’t once looked at the list Vex had provided each table with. But there were a lot of exceptions. Different crops had different tax rates – grain was exempt all together because they were perpetually so short of it.   
He could hear Vex counting aloud at the next table.   
“Six, seven, eight, nine, dozen is… A hundred and eight, so eleven for take.” Percy jumped down from the cart. “Nearest ten, good sir, by letter of the law.”  
“That’s you, sirrah.” Percy said. “Off you go.”  
The sweaty farmhand moved off.   
Percy looked back to the queue, which wasn’t too long. The cart at the front was all sacks. Percy supressed a short sigh. They would all have to be opened and checked individually, and dug in to. Hiding apples or roots in a bag of grain was an easy tax dodge.

“Eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four. Thank you for easy number, good sir. Two sacks as tax, and be on your way. Go and find yourself something to eat. You look ready to drop.” The boy nodded. He looked like Vex felt. She rolled her shoulders and stretched her back as Jan and the boy took the two sacks from the cart. Vex stared in to the gathering dusk. She could see two more carts making their way up to the station. They were starting to thin.   
“Percival, dear!” She called. He looked up from his count. “Would you like to go in with our tallies now? I see better in this light than you do.”  
“If you’re offering, thank you.”  
Vex waved the next cart over to her table. Marrows. Alright. She climbed up in to the cart and started counting sacks. 

Hoofbeats coming up behind her, at a gallop.   
The street child reacted before the noblewoman could. She spun around, reaching for a dagger. A grey horse was coming up on her fast, almost shining in the fading light. Bedevere. She let her breath go.  
“I say!” Bedevere called. “Lady Vex’ahlia, do you know if Cassandra is still out here?”  
“Honestly, Bedevere, I’m not sure. We’re losing the light, so she won’t be for much longer. She was at the East Gate.”  
“I came from there.” Bedevere pulled his sweating horse up close beside the wagon.  
“Then she’s probably checking tallies.” Vex said.  
Bedevere nodded shortly. “I take my leave then, good lady.”   
He cantered off again.  
Vex sighed. “I’m sorry, Jan, I lost count. Start again.”

“I have nine, taking us to twenty-four.” Percy said.  
“Check.” Cass said, leaning back and rubbing her eyes.  
“Check.” Archibald echoed, copying her.   
“Which should mean… forty… four hundred and eighty, forty eight… a little over five hundred barrels of apples in! Blessings of Melura! Has Keyleth been at the orchards, Percy?” Cass asked.  
“Not that I know of, but she’s the kind to leave a gift without a word.” Percy said.  
“And they’ll keep coming until Winters Crest.” Cass said. “If we have another year like this for apples, we’ll put the tax up.”  
“Do we have numbers for grain?” Archibald asked.  
“We should do.” Cass started shifting papers around. “Oh, thank Erasthis, I’ve already tallied them. Six hundred and twelve sacks in.”  
“And that’s unmilled grain?” Archibald asked.  
“That’s unmilled grain.”  
Archibald sighed. “How much is still standing in the fields?”  
“We can send Vex out at dawn to check.” Percy said.   
“It’s not enough.” Archibald said.  
“I know.” Cass said firmly. “We’ve never been self-sufficient for grain. In the Alabaster Sierras, we never will be. That’s what-” She cut herself off for a heartbeat. “The Hanserrens are for.” She stood up and started gathering papers. “I’m going to lock these up. I suggest you two go to bed.” She left.   
Archibald got up slowly, groaning slightly. “Where’s your lady wife?”  
“In the cellars, doing the storage.” Percy stood too. “She’d be good at this too, but she’s got a good nose for picking rot out before it spreads.”  
Archibald sighed. “I’m getting too old for this.”  
Percy nodded. “It’s murder, isn’t it?”  
“I don’t remember it ever being this bad before…”  
Percy sighed. “It’s easy to remember what was too kindly. And there used to be structures, people to delegate to who knew what they were doing. The methods died with the workers for the most part.” Only Archibald remained of the old council. Every councillor had known their own part in harvest, but not really anybody else’s. Percy’s father and Vesper had known all of it, but…  
Percy, Cass, and Archibald had been left to scrape together a method from half-remembered processes from half a lifetime ago. It worked, but it was exhausting. “We should be through the worst of it in a day or two.”  
“And there were more people.” Archibald said. Percy looked at him. “I remember a time when this castle rang with life. These days it’s very quiet.” He sighed. “Am I an old fool for missing the sound of children laughing in these halls, for hoping to hear them again?”  
There was a long silence.  
“Goodnight, Archie.” Percy said.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hunters,” Vex called, seeing her breath fog the air, “This is Master Bedevere Morholt Pelleas Hanserren. He rides with us today.”  
Harvest was, mercifully, more or less over. Two weeks of near sleepless chaos had passed, more or less successfully. They had apples and gourds enough that they’d be exporting them, unless the entire city planned to be drunk on cider for a month. The grain take was woefully inadequate, but quite good for Whitestone. So Vex smilingly welcomed the Hanserren boy on The Grey Hunt’s first proper deer hunt of the year.   
Bedevere dropped his head for a moment. None of the hunters returned the bow. Bedevere looked a little surprised, but was too well trained to show that he expected deference as a matter of course. Whitestone respected Whitestonian nobility, which was to say ‘de Rolos’. Bedevere wasn’t one, at least not yet. If he had his way, he’d have married Cassandra by next Merryfrond. Not being a de Rolo yet meant he had to earn deference from The Hunt.

They rode. Vex had chosen their place – about two hours ride from The City, a crest of rock so sheer and fragmented that it kept the huge trees which covered most of the peninsula from growing. Instead, it was dense scrub, low bushes and trees too starved to grow big, covered in tender shoots in easy reach of a deer’s mouth. She described her plan to the hunt as they went, when they were traveling slowly enough that she didn’t have to shout over the wind.

Vex pulled them off the road far ahead of the site, so they stayed downwind of the place for as long as possible. The ground was thick with tracks and scat. Her hopes were high. The real problem, of course, was that it was much easier to see out of the covert than in to it. If the deer startled and ran upwind, they’d lose the opportunity and have to run them down.   
Vex set the Hunt in a long arc downwind of the covert, Bedevere somewhere in the middle, and trusted them to stay very still until the deer panicked. Then she flew up. Almost straight up, so high that to fall would have been certain death, until she couldn’t see which movements in the scrub were deer and which were wind. Then she arced upwind, flew right over the clearing, and plunged back through the trees, feeling branches pull at her cloak, mindless of stealth now. When she could see the shapes of individual pine needles on the forest floor, she dropped Trinket out. She wasn’t sure that deer would know to fear a woman on a broom. They would surely fear a roaring bear.  
Trinket took only a moment to get his bearings, then barrelled forwards. He knew to be big. He knew to be loud.   
She heard the first deer’s snort of alarm. She angled herself upwards, she wanted to be slightly ahead of Trinket, and high enough not to fear stray shots. All of the Hunt knew what would befall them if they hit Trinket.   
Vex’s first sight of a deer was of one staggering sideways from an arrow between the ribs. No need to shoot that one. She sighted another and shot. She’d lamed it, but not killed it. She shot again. She cast about for movement. That was Trinket. That one was already hit. So was that one. That one was – no! If she missed she risked hitting Bedevere. He was cantering to intercept the deer. Surely it would dodge him. She could pick it off once it was past him. Bedevere’s grey mare was presenting the wrong side of Bedevere to the deer. He’d have to spear the deer across his own horse’s neck. Surely that –   
The mare sidestepped. Bedevere used his own preserved momentum to drive the spear in to the stag’s chest. Vex relaxed her drawing arm. 

She circled back, looking for any deer that weren’t down. The only creature moving in the covert was Trinket, nosing idly at a twitching deer. Vex landed and finished the creature with a cut to the neck. Trinket leaned forward to lick.  
“Not yet.” She said firmly. “Give me a minute.” Trinket flopped on to the ground.

Vex took off, giving the ‘cease fire’ cry, though doubtless they all already had. She went to Bedevere first, she felt slightly more responsible for him, somehow.   
“That was nicely done.”  
“Oh, did you see?” He said, slightly too casually. Vex nodded. “That’s the technique for boar, but the boar don’t usually die quite so easily. You have to…” Bedevere gestured, as though maintaining a grip and trying to keep the spear in a struggling animal. 

It was dark by the time they got back in sight of the walls of Whitestone, Vex flying at the helm, holding a lit torch. They weren’t called to halt by the Watchmen. The gates were opened before them amid cries of   
“The Grey Hunt returns!”  
As they passed in to the city, houses opened their doors to look at them, bearing hooded candles, or sometimes burning brands. Even by night, young and old filed on to the streets behind them. Vex hadn’t expected that. She’d expected them to pass in more or less unremarked. Bedevere seemed quite comfortable with the attention. His already erect seat had grown a little taller, and he seemed to have instructed his tired, bloody mare to prance.  
Then the singing started, indistinct at first, but getting slowly louder and clearer.  
“Now blow your horn, hunter  
And blow your horn jolly hunter.” That much was a chorus, there were verses, but being sung by fewer people and further back, and, Vex thought, with some disagreement on the words. She should ask Percy later.  
When they reached the Hunt Lodge, she rose a few feet higher and cried  
“Is there a butcher among you who will take these twelve beasts and make them the food of Whitestone?” She even sounded like a noblewoman.  
“I!” A voice cried. “I, and I will give you ten pieces of gold for them.”  
“Lady, I will give you twelve!” Another voice.  
“Come and be seen.” Vex called.   
“Twelve and two!” The first voice belonged to an elderly rake of a man.  
“Twelve four.” The second voice came from a younger man, broad shouldered, still old enough to be Vex’s father.  
The older man hesitated. “For the glory of Whitestone, twelve and five.”  
Silence.  
“To you, then, good sir. Lead us to your place of business and we will give the deer to you.”

Vex and Bedevere found the gates of the castle open before them. Vex made a mental note to chide Jarett while Bedevere gave a groom detailed instructions regarding his mare.  
“Treat her like a noblewoman, mark you, for such she is.” Vex cast him a look, and resisted inviting the horse in to the castle to sleep in a guest bedroom. She wasn’t entirely sure Bedevere wouldn’t take her seriously.  
She started slowly up the steps to the doors with Trinket, letting Bedevere trot to catch up. She pushed the door open.   
Percy and Cass stood by the foot of the stairs, apparently waiting for them.  
“Here I leave and make an end   
Now of this hunters’ lore:  
We’ll say their bows are best unbent,  
Their arrows fly no more.” It occurred to Vex in that moment that she’d never heard Cass sing before. And this was the verse of the melody she hadn’t been able to pick out in the town. Cass was singing the tune, Percy was singing something entirely different. They must have learned it as children. They both seemed to know it as well as their own names.   
“Now blow your horn, hunter,  
And blow your horn, jolly hunter.”  
Vex knew a cue well enough to bow. Bedevere copied her.   
“How many?” Percy asked, as he came forward to kiss her.  
“Twelve.” Vex said, when they broke apart. Bedevere was kissing Cass’s hand. “It’s not going to feed the whole city, but-”  
“It might if you did it twice per week.”  
“I’ll start struggling to find deer if I do that.”  
“But if you alternate with Boar,” Bedevere said. “you’ll eke both stocks out, and this is when boar hunting is the most fun!”  
Vex hesitated. Maybe the boar rut came later this far north, but she and Trinket had learned a few years ago that going after boar in early winter was dangerous, even if they were as plump as they came. But Bedevere had said ‘most fun’, not ‘best’ or ‘most fruitful’.  
Percy stepped in to her reverie. “Both of you need to wash and eat before we make any plans. Baths are being drawn upstairs.”  
“Baths?” Bedevere said. “How many do you have?”  
“Four.”  
“Four!” Bedevere exclaimed. “With only three of you!”  
“There were many more of us, once upon a time.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Good morning, Lady Vex’ahlia.”  
Vex turned at the foot of the stairs in the hall. “Good morning, Archibald. Are you here to see Cassandra?”  
“As you’ve said.” He continued towards her. He moved slower than Vex naturally would have. He was old. “I’m told The Grey Hunt returned in triumph yesterday. A score of deer?”  
“Stories already are growing. Twelve. All taken within a hundred heartbeats.” They started up the stairs together. “Scaring deer out of low scrub towards a treeline where archers are waiting takes careful set-up, but if you get it right…”  
“Your hunters grow more efficient by the day it seems: Deer, harpies, that giant… Is there anything they can’t do?”  
“I will not claim so boldly.” Vex said.   
“You’ve put a lot of effort in to training them. Percival told me there’s a woman among them you think might make a captain.” Cherry. He was talking about Cherry, who’d been lying up with her sister yesterday, so hadn’t come. Vex should enquire after the outcome of that, if mother and child were well. That would be kind. “I suppose it is always the aim of those who lead, to… try to make themselves obsolete, unnecessary.”  
“Now, I didn’t say that.” Vex said firmly.   
“And I didn’t hear it, my lady, but you should perhaps consider… that is, it might give you peace of mind to realise, that it probably will not be long until The Grey Hunt can survive without you, might even thrive on your stepping back for a period of months.”  
Vex eyed him. Was this a badly handled compliment, or a hint to do something else in particular for nine months?   
“You are undoubtedly the best Hunt Mistress in living memory, you’ve worked hard and achieved much, but I know other duties call you. There will come a time when you will need to delegate. Anyway, good morning.” He made a motion towards a short bow, and stopped outside Cassandras study. Vex kept walking. 

“Three weeks here seems too little.” Bedevere said.  
“You must keep your word, as all with a name worth speaking of must.” Cass replied. “And has your father no need of you?”  
“We are five sons, he will survive without me.”  
“Yet your word.”  
Bedevere sighed and walked over to the library window, looking down in to the courtyard. Cass followed. He shifted to let her in front of him. Bedevere’s escort and the castle grooms were mustering the horses. He would be away within the hour.   
“Yet my word.” Bedevere repeated, sighing deeply. “I will return, Cassandra. I give that same word back to you, I will return.”  
“Before the snows fall?”  
“Before the snows or through them.” He settled his hands on her waist. Cass felt her breath catch. What was she supposed to do? Returning the gesture, putting her hands on his or turning to touch him, felt too forward, pushing his hands away felt too cold. “You feel it too.” He said. Felt what? She’d make herself look stupid by asking. “My family will place no barrier to our union. If you can persuade your brother,” He leant forward, Cass felt his breath on her neck.  
“Relax, Cassandra.”  
“as soon as Merryfrond,”  
“Keep still now, don’t fight me.”  
“You could be mine.”  
“Still, now. Good girl.”  
She felt a mouth on her neck.

A voice. A door. The mouth withdrew. Cass turned and watched him walk away from her, kissing his hand in farewell. Rain had started to fall. She could hear it, feel the chill spreading over her. As the footsteps faded, Cass fell to her knees. Her sight was dim, she was gasping. There were no tears. She hadn’t wept at this for a long time. 

“M’lady?” The door opened. “Oh, m’lady!” Erin’s voice. Erin’s footsteps. “Come on, m’lady, let’s get you over to the fire. You’re freezing.” Erin called for another servant as she half pulled, half carried Cassandra over to the loveseat by the fire. Cass’s legs didn’t really feel like they belonged to her. As Erin turned to ask whoever had come in for a cup of warm milk - her ladyship has fainted, go quickly – the firelight caught the two pale little scars on Erin’s neck. Only then did the shaking turn to tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me.


End file.
